The Panhandle Rancher Speaks…..Needed Changes

What is required to turn the Ship of State away from the reefs and shoals that surely lie ahead?

1. We must turn out any and all career politicians. This can happen in as little as three years. If someone has held office for more than two terms, he or she is a professional politician. Elected office is a service not a privilege. Absent term limits, which professional politicians are loath to pay more than lip service toward, we must show them the road. Each and every one. In their stead we must elect representatives that are sworn to enact term limiting legislation.

2. Our public debt is more than onerous (http://www.usdebtclock.org/). It is no secret that we the baby boomer generation are breaking the bank. We paid our Social Security dues and then let politicians raid those funds to pay for foreign wars. Should we be surprised to discover the till is broken? Private not public investment should secure our gray hairs.

3. Try as I may, I cannot find ‘entitlement’ proclaimed anywhere in our Constitution. Entitlements my friends are fictions created by professional politicians currying favor. Anyone who has seen a native Indian reservation knows what happens when the central government provides help. The result is demeaning of character and destructive of initiative. Most of us don’t want governmental help. We want to be left alone, to live our lives in tranquility, and not be taxed (or shared) out of our livelihood. Although often quoted by Socialist and Communist governments, the words of II Thessalonians as echoed by John Smith in 1609 ring true:

“Countrymen, the long experience of our late miseries I hope is sufficient to persuade everyone to a present correction of himself, And think not that either my pains nor the adventurers’ purses will ever maintain you in idleness and sloth…

…the greater part must be more industrious, or starve…

You must obey this now for a law, that he that will not work shall not eat (except by sickness he be disabled). For the labors of thirty or forty honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain a hundred and fifty idle loiterers.”

There is a place for charity and that place is with the individual and with the church. Our government was never intended to be a welfare machine.

3. Because of our immense public debt, all foreign aid should end, NOW. The concept of borrowing only to give these monies away to unfriendly and unhelpful nations is foolish beyond extreme. There was no foreign aid for our first 500 years of national life as it was believed that the Constitution did not permit the government to use the people’s money for foreign charity. Our spending to GDP ration is 38%. Each US family has a tax debt of almost three quarters of a million dollars! This is insane. Our national spending binge must (or it will surely) stop and the federal government should shrink accordingly in size and obligation.

4. As we have an immense public debt, we can no longer afford costly wars whose purpose are to ‘export democracy.’ Democracy my friends will not export and can only be achieved with the blood of patriots. If a people are unwilling to die for their freedom they don’t deserve it; when given it freely that people will surely lose it.

If we must go to war, then we should wage unrestricted warfare. General Sherman understood this as did, Generals Patton, and Le May. Our children are too valuable to waste while dithering over collateral damage. My father’s generation ended a world war in less time than we’ve spent in Iraq. They did this by firebombing both Germany and Japan and thus destroying civilian support for the war. Ever wonder why the Confederacy never resorted to organized guerilla war after surrender; or why neither did the Germans or Japanese peoples after WWII? By wars end, civilians had lost all interest in war because they were completely occupied trying to simply find enough food to eat. There are no innocent civilians. Armies are populated from the citizen pool and fed by their labors. I sincerely urge each of you read General Sherman’s orders to the Mayor and City Council of Atlanta.

5. Our philosophy of taxation must change. People cry that the wealthy must pay their fair share. That fair share my friend is the exactly same amount as is yours. After all each of us only has one vote and one life to give. Either we enact a flat tax whereby the same percentage of income is extracted from each of us, or we really do the right thing and tax consumption thus rewarding savings and production. Ayn Rand is more often right than wrong (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/ayn_rand.html). You do realize my friends that there is no longer any private real estate in the United States? I own my home, I own my ranch, you proclaim. No my friend you do not. Not even if you have no mortgage. Real estate these days is merely leased from a taxing entity. Try not paying those city or county property taxes and see how long you ‘own’ that property. A one time consumption tax or flat tax on income derived from ownership could set things right once again. Either the property is taxed once when it sells to a new owner and then never again, or income produced from the property is taxed at a flat rate. If the property produces no income, it isn’t taxed.

6. We must cause power to shift from big central government toward the States. State government is closer to the people than is the federal government and thus better represents the people’s desire. If New York wants big state taxes and restrictive government, I say good for US Senator Charles Shumer and the people of the Great State of New York. Vote with your feet and move to Wyoming if you want less government and more freedom.

7. We need to learn to work together as a people once again. One of the best methods for this is a national draft. Our voluntary army lets too many escape one of the primary duties of citizenship and so we end up with politicians who run for office based on their father’s or grandfather’s war record (sadly, I kid you not). There are some who are ethically opposed to military service. These individuals occupy a ground too high for me to fathom, while all the while consuming the largess of other people’s sacrifice. We should create an alternate system of national service for these lofty individuals, a system replete with hardship and labor and a boot camp not at all unlike Camp Lejune.

9 Comments

Great article. I agree with every point you made.
I have often contacted my elected officials about term limits; their answer is always the same, “We have term limits in place.” By term limits, I mean you should be able to hold the office one term and then you are NEVER able to hold that office again.
And, no one, not even the President should receive a salary for life just because they held an elected office.
Again, great article.

I am all for getting rid of career politicians, the thing is we have to stop all the voter fraud going on. There are illegals voting, voting more than once, people being intimidated at the polls, hell there’s even dead people voting! This is the most corrupt regime to ever sit in the WH. We’ll see at the mid-term elections what happens. Of course you still have the Obama worshippers out there who would vote for him again if they could.

Right you are D. I got caught up in the moment. I should have said Parris Island Recruit Depot.

A long time ago I decided there were certain things that I would not tolerate and principles that I would give my life for. This country is indeed at a crossroads. Thomas Paine once remarked, “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” That my friends is the remark of a real man. As beginning typists were once taught to type, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.”

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